


Abyss

by Nautilusopus



Series: FFVII Halloween Week 2020 [2]
Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Agoraphobia, Claustrophobia, Gen, Hallucinations, Mental Instability, Mild Gore, Paranoia, Post-Canon, Psychological Horror, Sensory Deprivation, a solo piece mostly, a two-for-one combo! ALL spaces are bad!, bottle episode, cosmic horror, dirge and crisis core not canon yadda yadda you know, no betas here we die like men, petrification, the vibes at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:29:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27213457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nautilusopus/pseuds/Nautilusopus
Summary: Cloud gets himself lost in some Cetra ruins. Not a situation he hasn't been in before, at least.And just like those times, he isn't alone here.(Written for FFVII Halloween Week 2020: Day 2 - The Thing)
Series: FFVII Halloween Week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985228
Comments: 17
Kudos: 23





	Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> WHAT'S UP BITCHES MOST OF THIS WAS WRITTEN DAY-OF WITH PARTS OF IT REPURPOSED FROM AN OLDER WIP I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING. 
> 
> I decided to lean more into the "trapped with the eldritch" horror aspect of the day 2 prompt, since you guys can get body horror and aliens from me any old day of the week. 
> 
> Again, wish this one was a little tidier, but we're working under time constraints and I barfed this up in the last two hours so fuck it.

In retrospect, Cloud's first mistake was probably not bringing his phone.

In all fairness, it wasn't as though that would have helped. He wouldn't have had a signal that deep underground, and the South Junon islands weren't exactly known for their stellar reception either. No point in bringing along something else that could fall out of his pocket. He'd already gone through a big enough headache getting his first phone replaced, and he _still_ wasn't sure where he'd lost that one.

The miles-wide pit left in the earth by the disappearance of the Temple of the Ancients had been a source of curiosity for him for some time now. With geostigma finally dealt with, there remained the question of how much they could rely on Aeris's intervention in the future for a third crisis that Cloud couldn't fix via stabbing (with the expected answer being "probably not much"). They needed answers on the Cetra, sooner rather than later. Unfortunately, with both Aeris and Bugenhagen dead, there remained a rapidly-dwindling list of semi-informed experts that had managed to avoid imprisonment or execution by Shinra, and none of them were exactly young. With their luck, there could potentially be another mass extinction event tomorrow, which meant they needed non-Aeris failsafes today.

It had been Cid that had actually suggested they search South Junon for any ruins they might've missed. The area was thick with vegetation, so any aerial shots were next to useless, meaning there could easily be other buildings nearby, buried under millennia of massive, gnarled roots and rotting, fallen oaks. Of course, that also meant someone was left with the unpleasant task of going back to the site of a lot of rather distressing memories. Preferably someone that knew the area, could handle hostile wildlife, had sufficient skill in surviving out in the sticks, and, should worst come to worst, surviving stupidly high falls.

Eventually, Cloud volunteered himself, figuring he may as well do something useful for the reconstruction effort besides chatting up homeless kids and hauling rubble. So perhaps that was actually his first mistake, and not bringing his phone was the second. He'd made a lot of bad decisions that week in general.

He hadn't expected it to be all that different from scouting what was left of Midgar, though. Equally depressing to be there, just as full of dilapidated monuments to a dead era, and about as isolated since whatever cell towers that had been there were long gone. Surely it couldn't have been _that_ much different.

In fact, in a lot of ways it was actually kind of pleasant. The air smelled like old wood and damp soil, and it was far enough out in the boonies to where the sky wasn't choked with residual smog. Light shone through the trees, enough to warm his skin, though not hot enough to be uncomfortable thanks to the shade provided by the sunlit green glow of the canopy above him. A gentle breeze occasionally blew through the branches, carrying with it the faint scent of the sea. He'd been sent to worse places by far than an uninhabited island covered in old growth forest. He hadn't even realised how long it had been since he'd last heard birds singing until now.

On the third day of searching, he actually found something. What he'd assumed at first was just an outcrop of rock set into the side of a hill actually seemed to be the remains of a massive staircase half-buried in the dirt and covered in grass. From the looks of things, it seemed like it had tipped over on its side. Cloud took a step back and tilted his head to the right, and then the left, trying to get a handle on what he was looking at. It was a staircase up, probably. Unless it had fallen over backwards as well. He decided to hedge his bets on the former and proceeded in the direction it seemed to have been pointing.

It paid off -- after a few minutes of walking, he started to see other traces of civilisation. Square stone blocks, covered in vines; a pillar so worn and weathered he'd have mistaken it for another fallen tree if he hadn't known what to look for; what appeared to be a knife sticking out of a tree trunk that looked to have slowly grown around it over the centuries, leaving nothing visible but the handle.

Eventually, he found an entire building.

It had been long since reclaimed by the forest, rendering it nearly invisible from the air, but this close there was no mistaking the geometric, almost blocky design of the white stone ahead of them, the walls themselves coiling like chunks of bismuth, giving the impression that the whole building was hunkering over him in a squat to inspect him. Cloud doubted very much Aeris would get along with a culture that favoured boxy, intimidating architecture like this.

He still wished she were here to see it.

He mentally shook himself. She wasn't, so he needed to do his damn job so he could get back home in time to let Yuffie needle him into letting her film him doing something embarrassing.

What he should've done at that point was to mark the area on his map so they could find it, wait another three days for the WRO to pick him up at the rendezvous point, and come back in another couple weeks with a proper team to check it out more thoroughly.

As pretty as it was out here, he wanted this trip over with. So he didn't. That was the third mistake.

The doors to the temple wouldn't budge, so Cloud squeezed himself through a hole in the wall a few metres away instead. He'd opted to travel light, and in that respect hadn't even brought his swords with him. He was better at magic than pretty much everyone, and certainly better than anything whatever might be lurking in the ruins could throw at him.

That was his fourth mistake; if only because when the floor gave way beneath him, he had nothing on him to dig into the stone walls, and his hands scraped desperately across smooth, mossy rocks until he was sent tumbling to the floors below.

He wasn't overly worried, as he pulled himself free from the rubble. The walls seemed to have caved in around him, leaving him in almost complete darkness save for the tiny pinpricks of blue given off by his eyes. His fingers burned as he braced his weight against his hand to sit up, and he realised a few nails had been ripped clean off as he'd tried to catch himself on the way down. Also not too big of a deal -- the wound would heal in a matter of hours, and he was damn lucky it hadn't been his whole arm. He didn't seem to have any broken bones or dislocated limbs, and he was pretty sure the disorientation he was feeling was from falling who knew how far in the dark, and not from a concussion. All in all, it could have been much worse.

As his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, he realised there were other lights he'd missed the first time around, clustered in the corners of the room. He knelt nearby one and realised it was some sort of bioluminescent mushroom. Very pretty, but probably not edible. He needed to get out of here sooner rather than later.

Doing that would be fairly straightforward in theory, if not in practice. He could smash his way through a wall or two if need be, but that might not be the safest course of action if it brought even more stone down on his head. The best course of action would be to keep going until he either found another exit, or some place in the architecture that could handle a more "direct" approach to freedom. He could hear water dripping somewhere in the distance, and while it might not be the cleanest, it was still better than nothing. This deep underground there were bound to be plenty of insects, and Cloud had spent enough time on the road (and in various caves, and in a desert, and in a one-room cabin with a mother that had no money and little food in the winter, and in Hojo's custody) to learn not to turn up his nose at the many forms food could take. He was skilled enough at climbing (and surviving stupidly long falls) for the distance he'd fallen to be a non-issue, so long as he could find somewhere safe to emerge. And thanks to the enhancements, he could see well enough to avoid getting turned around in the dark, so long as he kept his wits about him. So, he'd be fine, at least for a little while. There was a reason he'd been trusted to do this solo in the first place. And eventually someone would notice he was gone anyway, and send out a search party.

He started thinking he'd maybe be less fine when the whole room suddenly lurched.

The stone tiles began shifting and sliding under his feet like gears as the ceiling above him began to arch even higher -- or perhaps the floor was sinking lower. It felt as though the whole structure was churning itself up, like the parts to some immense machine -- which it very well could have been, based on his limited experience with Cetra ruins. Cloud threw his shoulder into the wall, realising there was now a non-zero chance of being crushed out of existence in an infinitely collapsing trap room, before the blocks swung forward of their own volition as though on a hinge, leading to a vast hallway that terminated in a stone wall. A dead end.

Well, if the walls here were still in good enough condition to support whatever magic was still infused into them, maybe there was a spot here that was sturdy enough to smash through. He'd tripped some sort of still-active security system, if he had to guess. He turned his attention to the rest of the chamber and felt the hairs on his neck stand on end.

The hall was littered with rubble, as was the rest of the place, but this was the only time he'd seen anything that could be called decorative. Scattered across the floor were chunks of statues in varying states of disrepair. A few, their faces worn almost completely off, were kneeling meditatively. Another, missing its head entirely, seemed to be in the act of running towards something, the stump of its arm bracing it against the floor. His foot knocked into a chunk of someone's face, twisted in anguish, sending it skittering into a kneeling soldier, buried under a carpet of moss.

They were incredibly detailed, and more to the point... inconsistent in quality. Some looked as though they'd been there for millennia, along with the walls around them. Others were still relatively well-preserved, regardless of where in the chamber they seemed to lie.

He found one lying on its stomach -- a woman perhaps his age, maybe a little younger. Clipped onto her waist was a perfectly carved Shinra Military Police Corps emblem, next to a well-worn holster, now filled with dirt. He followed where the statue's eyes were pointing and found a gun. Not carved. Real. The model looked about two hundred years old, which was still at least eighteen hundred years past what should have been the youngest possible architecture in this place.

Cloud slowly got to his feet, barely daring to breathe, and began to back away as quietly as he could manage. He wasn't alone here.

A shadow passed through the room, causing all the lights to wink out -- which shouldn't have even been possible, because the only light in that room was provided by the mushrooms. He could feel the eyes on his neck from every corner of the room. He could see them, too, in the corner of his vision -- bright blue and glowing, a perfect mirror of his own, keeping pace with him the entire time. He could hear their footsteps in time with his. He refused to look. That's what they wanted.

The dead end was looking at him now as well, the wall slowly pushing itself closer and closer to him. He created a flame in his hand, expecting it to rear back, and instead was met with a maw of teeth and eyes surging towards him, snuffing the flame out as Cloud stumbled over rubble he could no longer see and fell onto his back, the thing bearing down upon him and lunging for his neck --

It didn't hurt. The wall swept harmlessly past him, though the eyes on the walls remained, and seemed to vanish as it disappeared behind him, leaving him in a darkened hallway leading to a dead end. Maybe it was a test or something. Or some illusion designed to frighten away robbers. Maybe it had seen he didn't have any ill intent, and...

He didn't feel all that good. He felt cold. It hadn't been this cold before.

It was getting harder and harder to breathe, too, as the cold spread from his feet and curled up around his chest, drawing a gasp from him at the way his heart seemed to skip a beat or two. The ice began fading, leaving numbness in his wake as it continued to spread through his body. He raised an arm and tried to pinch it to restore feeling. Fingers instead scraped across smooth, cool stone.

He tried to drag himself to his feet again, only to find he was unable to feel his legs. He couldn't lower the arm he'd raised to support himself anymore, and tried to push himself upright after he'd fallen on his back again with his remaining arm until that too went numb. His heart should have been pounding in his chest, but it wasn't, and he knew exactly why. Then his lungs froze, and he couldn't breathe -- can't breathe --

It was almost merciful when the stone finally claimed the rest of him, leaving him without any sensation at all. The eyes --his eyes, thousands and thousands of them -- at the end of the hall bored into his, and now he was unable to look away.

He'd always known he'd die in combat. He'd made peace with it at the age of fourteen in the middle of a firefight in the slums. But he hadn't thought -- he didn't imagine it would be this _soon_. He wasn't ready yet. With the eyes pressing in around him from all angles, just barely enough light to reveal the silhouettes they were attached to, all Cloud could feel was juvenile fear.

He wished he could look away for the final blow, when he was smashed to pieces along with the rest of the statues in this place. His eyes were frozen in place as he instead held the thing's gaze, waiting for the end.

It didn't come. It was close now -- incredibly so. He could hear it breathing. It loomed over his chest, now mere inches from his face. All he could see were eyes and teeth, eyes and teeth, eyes and teeth and he couldn't move. It was just standing there, waiting.

The seconds ticked by. It did not move. It didn't knock his head off, either.

It didn't stop looking at him, though. With _his_ eyes, they were _his_ , and it just kept staring. They were _his_ \--

It was okay. It was fine. The others would come looking for him. They knew roughly the area he was in. Maybe they'd even find the ruins. Excavate for him. Find whatever hidden chamber they'd moved him to. It would be fine.

With that thought in mind, it was easy enough to try and calm himself. It might be a little... unpleasant now, but he'd gone through a lot worse than a few hours in the dark with something nasty. Afterwards, this would be another anecdote he could tell Yuffie about or something. "Remember that one time I got lost in the middle of nowhere and got myself stuck in some pit?" he'd say, and then she'd needle him about how much of a moron he was, and how of course he'd get lost, space cadet that he was.

He couldn't see much from where he lay, and his eyes were still frozen in one position, unable to blink. That was fine, too. There were tricks he'd learned over the years of keeping his mind sharp in situations of stress, or when trying to stay awake on watch duty. He held the creature's gaze (as though he could do anything but), and began going over multiplication tables.

He spent a while thinking about nines. Adding the digits of a number and having that number equal nine meant it was divisible by nine. Eventually, he stopped going over tables specifically, and just started picking numbers he'd gone over before.

243 -- that was how much the lunch he'd had before departing had cost. He, Tifa, Reeve, and Barret had all gone out for once, and Cloud had insisted on covering the bill. It wasn't terribly expensive, as group lunches went. For a moment, he'd regretting the decision when he remembered how much Barret could eat, before scolding himself immediately. Barret could eat whatever the hell he wanted, and it wasn't Cloud's place to complain about it when he was lucky he had someone to eat lunch with at all.

Three and four made seven, and then another two made nine. That one worked.

He'd ordered 50 metres of 12 gauge copper wiring for a project. For his bike. His -- 50 and 12 weren't divisible by 9, but maybe 62? But that wasn't either --

The eyes hadn't looked away yet.

 _What do you want from me?_ he thought, unsure if it could hear him.

He did not receive a reply.

The hours continued to tick by one after another. All around him, he could hear insect life growing louder, presumably as the sun set. By now they'd have to have noticed he hadn't checked in. They were probably already getting worried.

The thing on the walls (in the walls?) began moving closer again, and once again all Cloud could think about was that he couldn't move -- until it faded away, leaving him in almost complete darkness.

He could faintly make out his fingernails lying on the ground a few paces away. It wasn't all that bad, Cloud reasoned, that he couldn't feel anything right now. Hand injuries had a nasty tendency towards pain that snuck up on you later. And it was either growing steadily colder, or was uncomfortably muggy out right now. He wouldn't have to deal with the discomfort of being hungry while he waited for the others, either, nor would he grow exhausted from an inability to sleep. All in all, things could be worse.

He just wished he could move his eyes. It was starting to get a little... disconcerting that he couldn't look away from his own fingernails lying on the stone floor like that. It just bugged him a little. That was all.

He wasn't exactly sure how long it had been. Maybe it was morning already. With the exit caved in, there was no way for him to see what the sun was doing. He knew how easy it was to lose track of time like that, what with spending so long in a tank with Hojo --

This wasn't as bad as Hojo, he told himself. No one was cutting him open, or messing with his head, or doing a host of unpleasant things he didn't want to think about. He was just a little bored, and he could deal with that.

The eyes reappeared. If he could, he would have tensed up, but as it stood they weren't all that interested in him this time, and merely drifted lazily about the walls occasionally glancing his way, looking at nothing in particular. Whatever it was, it was apparently put here to guard this place. That made sense -- they'd fought something... well, not similar, but vaguely like it in the Temple of the Ancients.

More time passed. He wasn't sure how much. Every second seemed to stretch out into ten. They had to have noticed he was gone by now, he reasoned. They'd just given him a little breathing room to check in, since he might not have reception. But soon it would pass the threshold of what could be considered reasonable doubt, and they'd come for him. Soon. It would be soon.

How would they find you, though? said the same voice in his head that had complained about Barret. It was hard enough to find this place yourself, and that was before it caved in. So how would they find you?

They would. They would find him. He couldn't allow himself to think anything more than that.

* * *

More time passed.

Cloud wanted to scream.

Judging by the way the insects seemed to get louder and quieter as time went on, it had been at least a week. A week of being stuck motionless in some sunless hole, hearing things moving in the dark, eyes flitting from wall to wall. Cloud wanted to scream and scream and scream until he coughed up blood, and then he wanted to scream some more.

It was around then that he finally forced himself to ask the questions hovering over him along with the pair of glowing blue eyes.

_What if I'm stuck down here?_

_What if no one finds me?_

_What if I'm gone so long they realise how much better off they are without me?_

They would come back for him -- unless they didn't want to. Then what?

Time was a concern now, too. Transformative spells like this were tricky; the materia for them were somewhat rare, and not much was known about them. Spend long enough under one, and the effects became permanent. No one really knew how much "long enough" was, since something like that could be difficult to test in the long and short term. There was a possibility it was even an urban legend -- after all, transformative spells tended to wear off after a week anyway, so how could they become permanent?

 _But what if it is?_ he thought anyway.

_If someone smashes me, will I die, or be alive in pieces?_

No sooner than he thought it he could hear screaming coming from the smashed, petrified bodies strewn around him. He wished he could close his eyes.

 _You're hallucinating,_ he told himself. And he knew he was hallucinating, because he was pretty sure Zack shouldn't have been down here with him.

"Look at you," he said, voice oozing contempt. "I died for you, and this is what you do with the chance I gave you to live?"

 _I'm sorry,_ he thought frantically, knowing it wasn't real. _I'm sorry, I didn't mean to --_

"You're pathetic," spat Zack. "What did I ever see in you?"

_We were friends._

"Yeah, apparently. Can you name a single thing that would've made me want to be friends with _you?_ "

_You said -- you said I was smart. That I'd go places._

"I guess this counts as places," said another voice, and he saw Tifa, next to Zack. "I mean... it is a location. That you've gone to. Good for you."

 _You're not real,_ he told them. _You aren't -- you're not real, you're not here, I'm seeing things._

They said nothing, and glowered at him with glowing blue eyes, and there was nothing Cloud could do to look away.

More hours passed. Then more days.

The eyes were his only company. They seemed to go on forever -- for miles and miles and miles, and without being able to look anywhere else but the sea of eyes or feel his own body, it was as though he were floating.

For all he knew, he was. Perhaps he was already dead. The breathing no longer seemed to echo around the room, seemed to instead be right next to his ear -- inside his head.

 _It's inside you_.

The thought came to him unbidden, and he recoiled from it. But he couldn't deny the way it dragged itself through where he was, the way the breathing resounded deafeningly in his ears, the way he no longer had any physical presence, the way its eyes encircled him, passing through him as he filled the space -- was the space --

_Get out. Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out --_

His vision swam. He saw his own fingernails, swarmed by ants. Rotting. He was rotting. They were crawling around inside him. He was rotting from the inside out, being eaten from the inside out, and the eyes stared hungrily at him -- inside of him.

He wished they'd get it over with. His body had already rotted away, but there was no escape for his mind. Not into sleep, not into death, not behind his own eyelids.

He was dead. That's why no one had come for him. He'd melted into this thing, and there was no escape.

A face filled his vision, and it had those awful, awful eyes and it spoke to him.

"Get out," it echoed. "Get out."

 _Please let me go,_ he begged. _Please. I just want to go, please let me go._

"Please let me go. Please, I just want to go, please let --"

_Stop it. Stop, please just --_

"Stop it. Stop please just --"

_Kill me!_

"Kill me!"

_Please, stop this, just kill me!_

And then the face smiled, and drew its own fingers across its throat, splitting it open in a wet, red grin, and then he was alone in the dark again.

Apart from the eyes, at least.

* * *

He didn't know how many weeks it had been anymore.

Sometimes, he was alone with its eyes. Sometimes it leaned in close to watch him. Always, he could hear it breathing.

He floated. Everything felt strange and far away. His thoughts seemed to ooze and sift around the void he found himself in. There were eyes, sometimes, or there weren't. That was all there was.

He knew there was a time before he'd been filled with eyes -- before he'd been filled with something too big to fit inside him. They went on forever in the dark, and all he could do was stare into infinity.

No matter how hard he tried, he could no longer see the ants swarming all over his fingernails. The last bit of him that existed in the world had been eaten away. Just him and forever now.

* * *

He could not stop staring, but forever no longer even looked at him.

He wondered how many others were here, floating in the dark with him.

* * *

He watched forever.

* * *

Light split through the cave in a single golden line, and it was beautiful.

The eyes disappeared. He was in a room. His hand, cold and grey, was raised in front of his face. He'd been pulled from forever back into this little stone chambre.

It widened, and the room was filled with sun. Honest to god sun, and there were birds singing, and Cloud would have wept if he could.

Footsteps around him. Voices --

_Cid._

"Can't have gone far," he was saying. "God damn, this place is a fuckin' mess..."

He walked into Cloud's field of view -- _it was Cid he was here he was real_ \-- and he could see him tripping past the remains of various statues. He'd walked right past Cloud.

 _He doesn't know I'm here,_ he thought. _He will never find me._

Minute after minute ticked by. Cid did not look at the statues. Not until one of the volunteers pointed out the gun.

"What in the...?"

His eyes swept over the remains of all the victims scattered across the room, then.

 _I'm here,_ he pleaded. _I'm here, please -- please, don't leave me --_

His gaze landed on Cloud. He paled. He saw his mouth move to form his name, but no sound came out.

_Please._

"GET A MEDIC DOWN HERE NOW!" he barked, rushing to his side.

 _Please_.

He felt a hand on his stomach -- _he felt he could feel he was feeling --_ and then suddenly he was far too warm, his own flesh hot and wet and pulsing with life, and then he was much too cold, shivering, coughing and choking as he took his first desperate breath, realising he didn't quite know how after so long, feeling the air rush into his lungs.

Cid's hands were so warm.

Cloud screamed.

He screamed with everything that had been pent up over every second he'd been down here, in the dark. He screamed at the way the wind blew itself across his skin, pulling at his hair. He screamed at the way the world shifted around him, small and finite and practically wrapped around him with how close and full it was, the motion dizzying beyond belief. He screamed until there was nothing else left in him.

He collapsed onto Cid's lap and wept.

"You came back," he sobbed. "You came back for me."

"Course I did, idiot," he grumbled, ruffling his hair.

"You came back," he said again, his trembling fingers latched onto Cid's shirt, not ready to let go. He couldn't imagine being ready in a thousand years.

Something soft was draped over him, and someone was wiping dirt and grime and moss and tears off his face, and he still didn't let go, still didn't stop crying.

"It saw me," he sobbed into Cid's knees. "It wouldn't look." As if that did any of it justice.

"I know," said Cid, even though he probably didn't, not really.

Someone else was touching his arm now, trying to pull him away from Cid.

" _No!_ " he screamed. " _No, you can't!"_ He wrenched himself away, crumpling before Cid, still unused to moving.

They waited a while longer, even as paramedics began to collect around them, until all Cloud had left in him were exhausted, shuddering gasps.

"I'll go with you," offered Cid. "We ain't stayin' here though. Come on, kiddo."

He was pulled to his feet, then, and he realised he wasn't quite sure how to walk either. It had been a long time since he'd last had legs.

* * *

Over five months, apparently, as he was told a little while later, being looked over in a room with lamps, and a couch, and light brown wallpaper, and a bookshelf, and....

They'd cleaned off his fingers with an antiseptic wipe to allow the torn skin to heal without infection, though his nails growing back would take a bit longer.

He'd gotten lucky. They'd combed the place over from the air and on foot multiple times but found nothing, and the search effort had dwindled to immediate family once the media hadn't been able to wring a sob story out of someone that young going missing anymore. It wasn't until one of the locals had discovered his bike buried under foliage not far from the remains of his last camp that the effort had been rekindled in the last week. Otherwise they might not have found him at all.

They'd said a lot of other things, too, but it was difficult to focus. After so long in almost complete silence, something as complicated as a conversation was hard to follow. They'd had to resort to using very simple sentences and repeating everything twice, for which he was extremely grateful.

He managed the stairs all on his own, when he was finally permitted to go home, though. Tifa was waiting downstairs with some hot chocolate, and Nanaki was right outside the bathroom door in case he needed help on the way down.

The soap he used smelled like home, and as weird as the water felt across his nail-less fingers, it was still warm and soothing and grounded him. He flicked the water off his hands and looked up.

In the mirror, staring back at him, were that thing's eyes. It was watching him. It had crawled home inside of him, and it was there, nestled in his skull, and he couldn't go back. He stood there, transfixed with horror, barely daring to breathe.

He didn't even need to stop to think about what had to be done. The pain he felt as his vision went red and then flashed white before going entirely dark was grounding, too, as was the feeling of his own fingers puncturing into his eyes, and his heart hammering in his chest.

He couldn't see the eyes anymore. Safe, finally. It couldn't get him here.

In the endless dark he now saw, a pair of eyes opened up, and then another, and another, a sea of them growing into infinity.

Even as he heard the others hammering on the bathroom door, drawn by the sound of his screaming, he couldn't look away.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Rod Sterling voice:** hey so would that be fucked up or what


End file.
